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Talk:Glossary
Definitions for easier maintenance We could create a category of ultra short articles (Definitions) that we populate this Glossary with. Then, on any other page in the wiki, we can add an explanation for an obscure term by including the definition. On the definition page, a simple noinclude allows us to add text viewable on the definition page but not included in the definition: This is a definition. Keep it short.Category:Defintions Example: Many pages mention Critical Hits.vRather than having the user have to go to a new page just to understand the term, we can use If developers decide that Critical Hits mean something else, we can update all the pages at once by correcting the Critical Hits definition article. Thoughts? —Wc8 (talk) 20:09, December 20, 2013 (UTC) Linking to Term Definition, Finding Term Definition with Search Linking: Is it possible to link to single terms in the Glossary (instead of to a whole section of terms starting with the same letter)? If so, how? If not, should it be made possible - especially for those terms that don't have an own wiki page? : Purplatypus solved the linking issue by putting HTML tags with ids around those terms in the glossary that don't have an own wiki page. It looks like ' TheDescribedTerm' in the source. There were only two such terms, Groups and InHabitant , which can now be linked directly like in this sentence. I suggest we do this with any terms without own pages that get added in the future. : (Uh, shouldn't a glossary term rather be singular, i.e., "Group" instead of "Groups"? The explanation is already for the singular term, too. I guess I'll go and fix that, and then the links. But that's a different topic - sorry for digressing.) : Mara the Marine Marauder (talk) 10:56, April 24, 2016 (UTC) Searching: If the Habitica wiki is searched for a term that doesn't have its own page and is only explained in the Glossary, the search usually doesn't yield useful results - especially, it doesn't find the Glossary, at least not among the first results. How can this be changed such that the search would lead the user to the definition in the Glossary? Would it help if the term got its own page which, in turn, redirected to the term's definition in the Glossary? The problem came up on the Groups Talk page, but I think it is more general and should probably be discussed here. Mara the Marine Marauder (talk) 16:50, April 16, 2016 (UTC) : I was also thinking about the linking issue. I don't think it's possible in the current table format, but would be if it were returned to the more glossary-like formatting. Looking at page history, it was changed in February 2015 supposedly to make it easier to edit in the Visual Editor, but maybe it would be worth changing back for the linking benefit? Thoughts? : I don't think we want to automatically create a page for every glossary term--that could potentially be a lot of short, otherwise unnecessary pages. But for terms we think users are particularly likely to search and otherwise wouldn't find results for, maybe a redirect would be helpful. : You made an interesting point on the Groups Talk page about users not being aware that the Glossary exists. It's a useful page that users should be more aware of. Any ideas for how best to fix that? I just added it to the Newbies category, but maybe it could also be linked to from more obvious places. Purplatypus (talk) 17:06, April 16, 2016 (UTC) In general, I'm not in favour of creating a page for brief definitions or links/redirections for terms. One disadvantage of doing so is that when a page with a certain name exists, any searches for that name take you directly to the page, which is great if the page happened to be relevant to you, but bad if you wanted to search for other uses of that word. For example, now that a Groups page exists, if you search for "groups", you don't see the search results list that includes "group plans", even though you might have been wanting to find information about special features for groups of people in the real world (I'll copy this to the Groups talk page). There's exceptions though where it makes sense, and Groups might be one of them (more on its talk page). Also too many pages makes any page harder to find if you're looking through lists of pages (e.g., the standard wiki page lists). That's not a big reason to avoid pages, but it's one consideration. A better solution might be to improve searchability by ensuring that key words are in all the articles they apply to (e.g., we'd add "group" and "groups" to relevant sentences in the Party page, if those words weren't already there) and to perhaps find some way to remove Keep articles from the standard search results. I haven't looked into whether that's possible, and perhaps it isn't even desirable. The Glossary can be linked to from the wiki's navigation bar. Reload a wiki page in ten minutes and you'll see it there. I'll be happy to take further suggestions after that if you're not happy with how it's displayed! LadyAlys (talk) 03:16, April 17, 2016 (UTC) : Grrrr. I should have tried to add Glossary to the menu before I posted that. I wanted to add it to the default menu so it would be really obvious, but only Wikia staff can edit that. It's already in the Help section of the navigation menu, which I hadn't realised, so clearly adding anything to the non-default menu sections is pretty much useless. Annoying. LadyAlys (talk) 03:22, April 17, 2016 (UTC) @LadyAlys, I can't confirm what you said about searching. I did searches for "group" and "groups" before and after adding the Groups page. (I even logged out, cleared cache and cookies, and used two browsers to make sure.) In both cases I get offered a dropdown list of possible pages with the word in the title ("Groups" and "Group Plans" for search word "group" now, only "Groups" for search word "groups"), but if I don't choose any of those and click Enter instead, I get the same list of search results as before, only now with the "Groups" page at the top. The "Group Plans" page (which was at the top before) is the second one in both cases. (Someone else better test that, too, though.) :Interesting. That's not the behaviour I see, so it probably depends on options set by the user and/or login status and/or browser/extensions. When I type "groups" and hit enter, I see only the Groups page. LadyAlys (talk) 21:29, April 17, 2016 (UTC) (Nonetheless, I still don't know what the best solution might be. Of course, all your arguments are valid.) About keeping or removing Keep articles from standard search results: There are pros and cons. If there's only one way, I'd say keep them in. Wikia already has lots of advanced search options, they are documented in the wikia help at http://community.wikia.com/wiki/Help:Searching. Once you're shown a search results list and click on the "Advanced" link at the upper right side, the first thing you get offered is a foolproof choice of which namespaces should be included in the search. Those people sufficiently interested (like us) will find the "Advanced" link or look up the advanced search options eventually in the wikia help when they need them. And newbies probably wouldn't find them even if they were documented in the wiki somewhere. One suggestion I can think of though is putting it in the FAQ. Something like: "Help, I'm searching for something in the wiki, and I get all those Keep and Blog and User blog pages as a result! Those aren't what I'm looking for!" - "Just click on the "Advanced" link at the upper right of the search list and... for more help, see http://community.wikia.com/wiki/Help:Searching..." As for the Glossary, I think it's fine in the Help section of the menu bar. I saw it there before, too. Definitely did as a newbie when I looked at the Help section closely. I just didn't read the Glossary lately, and didn't think of it now when I made the "Groups" page. Thank you for taking the time to work on these issues! (And @Purplatypus, too!) Mara the Marine Marauder (talk) 07:07, April 17, 2016 (UTC)